ASLEEP A KING
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silken as a nun's must be-she prinked at it now and then but with–
out excitement-her thinness and the strange tint and glow of her
skin. She placed the flowers with a certain tender abstraction, as you
would arrange a child's clothes before church. That morning she had
said goodbye to the hospital and now for six days would be getting
ready for Mark. The thought frightened him, he dug his nails into
his palm, watching her. At last forced himself quiet and went in.
"Hello."
She waited, smiling, still shy of him.
"I wasn't sure you'd come over."
"I said I would, didn't
I?"
That was the nearest she had ever come to flirtation, the shy
upward look, a hint of breathlessness in her speech. That was what
had brought him to life again in the hospital, and now a different
active
kind of living was expected of him. The right remark, a kiss, a
young man is not supposed to be tired before the sun has set.
She
was not tired, had no trouble being alive, had never hidden a pistol
in
her bureau drawer. She had brought armfuls of packages from
Millboro and in solemn rapture was pulling their brown paper off,
like a child. And when all her toys were hung up around her that
would be her house, to live in, as if it could never be torn down.
"Look!" she said. "They're for the kitchen, they were only fifty
cents!" Curtains, flimsy yellow things, fit for dolls. "Do you like them?
Do you think they'll be all right?" All the depths of her grey eyes were
alive over them: he tried hard to get in there with her, in her doll's
house. "Yes, they're fine"- that was not enough: he went on with the
effort, wanting to get himself into words, quickly-"Yellow's nice in a
kitchen." "That's what I thought, but I couldn't get this yellow.... "
She held up a scree"ching red double-boiler. "The kitchen will look
like a ... "
"Snap-dragon," he said.
"You're the snap-dragon."
"No I'm not! No!"
There was too much pain in his voice. He looked away, ashamed.
Her face went still suddenly and she took a step toward him, like an
angel in one of those cheap photographs, the brilliant red pots dang–
ling in her hands. "What's the matter?"
"Listen, I ought to tell you things.... "
He stood at the window, the sun a flare on his back and his face
deep-lined in shadow. He watched his mother's house across the road,
as if some secret could be torn out of
it
by looking, that would make
him well. Saw the dark kitchen curtains belly and float back as she
passed and the sheet,> waving a little like weird birds over the deep-
